School ignoring requests for SENCO meeting

I can honestly say I know that we have never had full time funding. My relative in London got home tutoring for their child with an EHCP. That would never happen here.
We have very pushy parents, so goodness knows what is going on.

The responses on this thread from the people who work in schools are evidence, if it were needed, of why schools are such awful, hostile places for young people these days.
If so many children need additional supports put in place to just cope with a day at school, doesn't that make you think that there's something wrong with the school? But no, people who work in schools continue to sell this lie that it's the parents and the children that have something wrong with them! It's maddening! Why can't the Department of Education and all these teachers/school staff recognise that it's their expectations that are wrong, not the children.
OP I'd suggest moving to a different school, but I imagine they are all pretty much the same, full of all these poor "on their knees" teachers who are trying to force kids to conform to their rigid expectations with little support or understanding of what children need.
I sat this as a parent of two children with EHCPs who haven't coped in mainstream but are thriving in other environments where their needs are met.

A lot of our pupils win their appeal, but often don’t like what is offered to them. So they then have to wait for a place which they feel would be better. They usually end up in a reduced timetable, which many actually like.

The law is the same in all LAs. SEP is based on needs, not what is ‘the norm’. SEP can cover break, lunch and all subjects. Your school could work with parents to improve EHCPs, including by supporting the parents to appeal if necessary.

Funding for before and afterschool clubs is unusual but also possible depending on the circumstances. Again, it often takes parents fighting for it.

I admit that sounds awful.
But is that because you chose a school miles away from where you live?

Never do any of our students get funding for before or after school clubs, break or lunch, or subjects such as Art, cookery, PE. The norm is 15 hours. I guess it varies depending on the local authority. We are in one of the worst areas for funding. Our pupils get 4000 less than those in London.

Students may go to the bathrooms at
8.30
9.05
10.05
11.15 - 11.35
12.35
1.35- 2.15
3.20

Each student has a card which will open their year group bathrooms. That is to prevent KS3 having to suffer the endless vaping in the KS4 bathrooms.
It’s always interesting that on school trips the same pupils manage the coach journey…. Or when in my room for 2 hours, waiting for parents to collect, they don’t ask for the bathroom.
Our students with genuine medical needs have medical passes and they can use the accessible toilets, if they prefer.
Medical cards are never questioned.
In a recent email, where teachers were asked which pupils use their toilet card, some leave every lesson. And parents refuse to provide medical evidence. I just hope those same parents don’t blame the school when their students flunk their exams. Imagine trying to give a lesson, with students constantly disrupting it to go to the bathroom.

Haven’t RTFT but you need to go to GP and request Right to Choose. Even if everything were in place for your DS, he would still slip through the cracks, because ADHD is a treatable condition that only improves with meds.

Parents of such DC should be supported to appeal.

Except for wholly independent schools (not all independent schools are wholly independent), a school being ‘full’, which isn’t defined in law, is not enough to refuse to name the placement in I if it is parental preference. The LA has to prove the school is so full admitting DC is incompatible with the efficient education of others or use of resources. The bar for this is higher than LAs and many schools admit. It has to be something tangible and specific and is more than an “adverse effect”, “impact on” or “prejudicial to”.

If it is inappropriate for provision to be made in a school, there is EOTAS/EOTIS.

Alongside appealing to SENDIST, they can pursue AP in the meantime. The LA is still responsible for the SEP in F. If the DC is CSA, they are still responsible for ensuring DC receive a suitable full-time education. They don’t simply have to wait at home as much as LAs would like them to.

There are massive generalisations. Taxis are only provided for full timetables. When your child has SEN and they're too unwell to cope with a full timetable, it all falls apart. At one stage I was driving for 5 hours per day to get my children to school. I had one just 2 miles away, but bullying on the bus stopped that being viable. Then another 22 miles away, but she was on an integration timetable, so no transport provided. Then another 30 miles away from there in the opposite direction, and 13 miles from home but she was allocated the same taxi as a girl who had beaten her up at school, so she couldn't take that and they wouldn't provide an alternative. So I was driving 65 miles in the morning, visiting my parents (disability) having a short break at home, then driving 65 miles in the afternoon.

Nowhere have I said I expect support staff to work for nothing. Stop making things up.

Schools can request EHCNAs. They could also suggest parents do.

EHCPs can be fully funded. LAs don’t do this unless forced. As per section 42 of the Children and Families Act 2014, LAs are ultimately responsible for securing the SEP in F. That includes ensuring their is adequate funding. This duty is absolute and non-delegable.

Technically LAs don’t go bankrupt. Section 114 reports/notices don’t automatically remove statutory duties.

School transport isn’t solely an SEN issue. The NAO report shows that more than 65% of pupils who are CSA or below who are receiving school transport don’t have SEND. Neither is it means tested.

You could push both routes : in school and through GP or privately. I have been in similar situation. Contact the governors of the school and copy all your communications with school. Be polite but very angry and disappointed at the total lack of response. Schools are underfunded as we all know. They should still reply and tell you there is no prospect of an assessment within x months. Secondly, try your GP. It sounds like your son is really struggling. If your GP doesn’t have the resources either a private assessment with a psychiatrist will cost around £1000-2000. This can help unlock things like extra time in exams. If he needs medication you have to pay for that privately until he is “settled” with it. I wish you luck. I think a diagnosis can be a massive help. It’s a slog but so much better to understand what support your child needs.

OP does your DS's speech at home get slightly better over long holidays?

I work with SENCOS and they should absolutely be having a meeting with you to discuss your concerns, gathering feedback from teachers, and with the results of that have a further meeting with you to discuss next steps for possible referrals etc.

Contact the school again - forward your previous email to the SENCO, head of year, the Head, and request a response by X date.
If you get no response I would go to Reception and request to speak to one go the above, and failing that, file a complaint following the school procedure.

While the SENCO cannot diagnose they can point you in the right direction, and if the teachers have highlighted certain issues with behaviour and concentration etc in the classroom, the SENCO can identify some strategies to help support a pupil - some schools may call this a Pupil Passport and it is shared with teachers to help them understand a pupil’s needs and challenges and best ways to support them. You don’t need a diagnosis for this when the SENCO agrees that there is a learning need.

Tbh it’s a bit remiss of the school to be doling out constant detentions and not addressing the reason for these; at our school these things are flagged and addressed but not all schools deal with these things well.

DD3 was extremely bright and extremely motivated. I was still getting emails about her 'Oxbridge potential' 7 months after she had crashed out of school - nobody had bothered to take her off the list despite her being in a mental health crisis.

Parents do what is easy. We all do. It's human behaviour. No parent is going to be making efforts to try and communicate with schools when they could just wave their child off at the door and have them come home in the afternoon. If they are making a fuss it's because it's necessary. If the thing they are asking for isn't the answer, they need help with the thing that is the answer.

Fortunately, DD2/3's school understand this and every parent gets a telephone call every single morning of the school week to check how the student has been overnight, if there are any issues that will affect their education, and if anything needs addressing. Every.single.day. In fact, today we went to the cinema for a school private showing of a film. DD3 had a slightly upsetting encounter and this afternoon I got an email from her tutor, who hadn't attended but had been told by another staff member about it.

Mainstream schools can't go to these lengths, naturally. But if they adjusted their attitudes to realise that parental communication is a helpful thing rather than an inconvenience, and if they adjusted their universal provision to account for the most common issues, half the kids wouldn't need the support they do.

Why do so many kids need toilet passes? Because the toilets are locked during lessons and break time is only 35 minutes, so 1300 kids have to get through the lunch queue and the toilets in 35 minutes. That's 37 children per minute between them.

i am glad your children were put in Independant education, that is what every child should have access to. There are no places in our area. Often these pupils are withdrawn from school and simply wait at home.

So then you will understand that until people realise we are in a crisis, it’s only going to get worse. Support staff get 7 weeks pay deducted for not working through the holidays, then another week for inset days. Are you then expecting them to work for nothing to clear the back log, when many in full time hours barely take home £1500? As you know, we don’t do the EHCPs and our council is slowly going bankrupt from the costs of these. We have wealthy parents who get a free taxi for their child because they have an EHCP and the Mother doesn’t work…..
No child with an EHCP gets full funding - the school has to make up the difference. Where is all the money from the VAT applied to private school fees? I would love to know.

Realistically, I don't think you have enough time left to wait for NHS assessment, unless your trust is unusually efficient.
It looks like you'll have to go private if you want your DS to pass the exams.

It’s time to make a formal complaint. Policy/ procedure should be on the school website. You’ve already been ignored by the head, so I’d consider taking it directly to the governing board.

Can you look at executive function strategies? A diagnosis is not necessarily going to help. What does he struggle with? what can help that he or you can do? Alarms, lists, apps? What is he getting detentions for?

Have you met with his form tutor about your concerns? The SENCo will not know your child. Meet with the tutor and ask them to raise the need for support to be put in place.

The OP is likely to have 'waited' because no one symptom her DS has shown has been enough to trigger concerns on their own, no teacher has raised it, so she's been reassured that his needs were 'normal' and the fact that an older sibling has ASD and this DS is different to them has made her assume that it couldn't be ASD.

I've been there. First with DD2, who wasn't like DD1, then with DD3, who wasn't like DD2. Now all 3 need specialist education but the school didn't flag anything and actively obstructed me getting them help, to the extent that the SENCO refused a direct instruction from the year head to help me apply for an EHCP because she felt DD2 didn't meet the criteria. Not only did she met the criteria, but she was placed straight into an independent special school once the EHCP was finalised.

DD3 was 'fine' until I made a formal complaint that my request for a meeting with the SENCO had been ignored. She spiralled, going from grade 8/9 student to completely out of school. She was also placed in an independent special school once her EHCP was finalised.

Both were year 9/10 when they got to the point of no return.

Hi OP, I'm sorry to hear the school aren't being helpful. Perhaps your DS has the inattentive profile of ADHD. He could also have ASD like your eldest but a different presentation. As the saying goes, when you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person...

Obviously costs will vary around the country but we paid around £3k for an assessment for ASD and ADHD (the ADOS which is the ASD part is more expensive). Before anyone jumps on me, it was 2020: our GP was willing to refer but everything state run had simply shut down. But no-one has ever raised any concerns about it being done privately and when we did eventually see the NHS they said it was excellent.

Regarding your son's speech, have you looked at the sites below? It might be helpful to narrow down the issues a bit.

Selective Mutism Information & Research Association (SMIRA) https://share.google/p80XjDVz5jjPajwpZ

And

https://share.google/WdNPF6YIZGOy8NDbV

Unfortunately the crap system in this country is you basically have to figure out what's up with your child yourself unless you're very lucky with the school.

You should request an ECHNA though. There's a template letter on the IPSEA website.

This is because of JCQ guidelines.

Parents of disabled children are also on their knees. Having to fight for every scrap of support. It is not demanding to advocate for your child to have their SEN met or for the school to adhere to the law. I know exactly what SEN provision is like at the moment. I have 3 DC with EHCPs and support families with disabled DC day in, day out. It still doesn’t make parents pursuing SEP demanding.

ADHD can actually be ADD, without hyperactivity.
Autistic spectrum is really wide.

Speech and other skills regression is a serious concern, it can be anything from neurological conditions to autistic burnout to stress, only a specialist in real life can tell. See what SALT say and take it from there but I'd go to GP too. SALT itself may take months to find out what the underlying problem is.

Any speech disorder will obviously affect exam performance, you don't have much time left if he's 15. Stress his wellbeing too in communication with all specialists.

You have neurodivergence running in the family, the probability of your DS2 having it is relatively high.
It's a medical matter, I don't think a school can be of much help initially, and yours obviously can't be bothered anyway.